The image processing techniques also progressed a lot and I'm convinced that the Voyager images still hide some "secrets". A nice example is in the second paper I've mentioned earlier which compares the topography of Charon's Oz Terra with the surface of Ariel, moon of Uranus, both showing similar disrupted crustal blocks (Fig. 19 & 20).The reprocessed Voyager images are really impressive.Marc.

There was some discussion here of true color pictures of Pluto from NH. What I can promise here is the lowest resolution true color picture of Pluto. From the "I'll do it my damned self" files I (after a few less successful attempts) took a true color image of Pluto on August 6.

This was taken with a C 9.25", ASI-1600mm, and RGB filters, I took 40 exposures x 5 seconds in each of RGB on an object that I had verified to move between August 5 and August 6. Then after combining the color frames, I subtracted the background light pollution RGB from the entire image. And voila, Pluto in color. It is the beige dot below the white dot (star) near center.

By a very lucky bit of happenstance, it is flanked on either side by very deeply (and opposite) colored stars of comparable brightness, one red and one blue, which gives some assurance that there wasn't a bias that made all dim objects appear to be one color or another.

The center of my Pluto has an average RGB of about 68, 67, 59. For comparison, a "true color" image from New Horizons, blurred and set to similar brightness has an RGB of about 83, 68, 55. So we're only talking about a couple of bytes of information in this photo, and that's being generous, but at least I can tell you, this is straight from the real thing.

There was some discussion here of true color pictures of Pluto from NH. What I can promise here is the lowest resolution true color picture of Pluto. From the "I'll do it my damned self" files I (after a few less successful attempts) took a true color image of Pluto on August 6.

Nice.

How is the white balance set? A simple test would be to image some daylight target (eg white cloud) and see if you get equal R, G, B.

Yes, Charon is included, so this should be roughly 20% Charon and 80% Pluto.

My RGB filters are from Baader and are rotated into the optical path of a monochrome ASI-1600 camera. Because the images are taken sequentially over a period of minutes, one possible source of noise is that a wispy cloud could have passed through the line of sight and altered the gain of one or two of the channels differentially. That's not highly likely, but not impossible. I've often used this same configuration to image Venus, for example, and I could use that data (it comes out quite white) to validate the color balance of the gear.

I think the lucky inclusion of quite red and blue stars flanking it close by help constrain the error, because stars only get so red and stars only get so blue, and a skew in either direction should have whitened one of those stars. I'm not sure if I can find any data on those specific stars that could be used to ground my measurements. There are brighter stars in the image (this was cropped from a 16 megapixel image and we're looking right into the plane of the Milky Way) so I could try to see if any of the stars in the image have a spectrum on record.

If you push the brightness of the dark area up even more, the limb of Pluto appears, silhouetted against the atmosphere, which must be very faintly illuminated by light refracted from the opposite terminator. That light came a long way - I'm surprised to see it. Or could it be reflected from Charon?

If you push the brightness of the dark area up even more, the limb of Pluto appears, silhouetted against the atmosphere, which must be very faintly illuminated by light refracted from the opposite terminator. That light came a long way - I'm surprised to see it. Or could it be reflected from Charon?

Phil

(image subsampled from Roman's)

Thanks a lot. I worked so hard.This view would be incomplete without it. That's why I didn't crop the image. I was truly amazed when I saw it!I even can see it without increasing the brightness, so people have different brightness settings on their devices and I tried to find a balance between brightness and noise. Most curious should find this little surprise.

If you push the brightness of the dark area up even more, the limb of Pluto appears, silhouetted against the atmosphere, which must be very faintly illuminated by light refracted from the opposite terminator. That light came a long way - I'm surprised to see it. Or could it be reflected from Charon?

Phil

(image subsampled from Roman's)

Hi Phil-

We noticed that faint limb glow in 2015, and decided it was probably from Charon about to rise behind the dark limb- light from the opposite sunlit limb of Pluto wouldn't be offset like that. We'd wanted to image Charon rising or setting behind Pluto during the encounter but the timing didn't work out, so this is our consolation prize.

IMAGE COPYRIGHT
Images posted on UnmannedSpaceflight.com may be copyrighted.
Do not reproduce without permission. Read
here for further information on space images and copyright.

OPINIONS AND MODERATION
Opinions expressed on UnmannedSpaceflight.com are those of the
individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions
of UnmannedSpaceflight.com or The Planetary Society. The all-volunteer
UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderation team is wholly independent
of The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has no influence
over decisions made by the UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderators.

SUPPORT THE FORUM
Unmannedspaceflight.com is a project of the Planetary Society
and is funded by donations from visitors and members. Help keep
this forum up and running by contributing
here.